American literature:An Overview

                                                  AMERICAN LITERATURE: AN OVERVIEW 

COLONIAL LITERATURE TO 1776

Although American literature actually began with the oral myths and traditional stories of Native American cultures, there was no written literature among the more then 500 different Indian cultures before the first Europeans arrived. Written American literature dates back to the times of early European colonists. Many of the Puritans who settled in the northeastern United States in the later 17th century were university graduates. They desired education to understand God, and their literature reflects their religious commitment. Whether they were writing metaphysical poetry, mundane daily journals, or religious dogma, their focus was on worshipping God and avoiding the dangers presented to the soul here on Earth. The Puritans placed great emphasis on stewardship; they tended to believe that material success was a sign of spiritual health. Advancing one’s individual profit and the community’s well-being was seen as serving God.

ANNE BRADSTREET’s (1612–72) book of poems, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, was one of the first poets to write English verse in the American colonies as well as the first American book published by a woman. Due to the lack of printing presses in the American colonies, the book was published in England. Bradstreet’s long religious poems, inspired by English metaphysical poets such as Edmund Spenser and John Donne, exemplify the work of early colonial writers and exhibit her mastery of the metaphysical style, which relied heavily on the use of extended conceits and metaphors. Bradstreet also wrote shorter, witty poems on more pedestrian subjects, as well as love poems for her husband and children.

MARY ROWLANDSON’s (ca. 1635–78) captivity narrative, describing the 11 weeks she spent with Indian Americans following an attack on her village, is the earliest prose writing of note by an American woman. Its simplicity of style stands in contrast to Bradstreet’s more educated work. Writings such as this captivity narrative by Rowlandson were not uncommon during the early colonial period and were often extremely popular with readers. The zealous Puritan spirit, ready to conquer the American wilderness in God’s name, is typified in the work of COTTON MATHER (1663–1728). A prolific and educated writer from a long line of early colonists in Massachusetts Bay, he wrote more than 500 books and pamphlets, many of them histories and biographies that form the cornerstone of New England colonial literature.

REVOLUTIONARY LITERATURE, 1776–1820

Although the triumph of America in the Revolutionary War heralded to many the promise of a great new literature, there was little literature of significance in the first years following the war except for outstanding political writing. The poet PHILIP FRENEAU (1752–1832) was one of the few exceptions. He stood out among his contemporaries for his passionately democratic spirit. Although he came from the same educated and aristocratic background as other writers of the time, he embraced liberal and democratic causes and opposed the other writers’ tendencies to support the monarchy. In addition to his poetry, Freneau became a well-known newspaper editor, crusading for democratic ideals and establishing a tradition later followed by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794–1878) and H. L. MENCKEN (1880–1956), among others. A slave who was brought to Boston, Massachusetts, from Africa when she was seven, PHILLIS WHEATLEY (1753–84) became one of the most notable poets of her age and the first African-American writer of note. Her poetry resembles Freneau’s in its religious subject matter and neoclassical style. With the turn of the 18th century, American intellectuals became obsessed with the search for a native literature, something that would loosen the apron springs of attachment to the cultural and literary models of England. Such cultural independence cannot be won with the speed of a military revolution. Only time and shared experience contribute to the eventual expression of the heart of a place by its people. Practical reasons also delayed the development of American literature. With no tradition to imitate, American writers of the Revolutionary period had only their forebears to look to for inspiration. American writers continued to anticipate and imitate new writing from England, as did American readers. In addition, with America growing so quickly, talented and educated people found rewarding work in politics, diplomacy, and law. These professions brought fame as well as fortune, while writing paid little or nothing. The publishing industry was slow to establish itself in America, and without publishers, there was no ready audience. Until about 1825, most writers paid printers to publish their own work, which meant that most published writing came from the wealthy, who could afford such a luxury. Another issue hampering the American literary scene was the lack of copyright laws protecting American writers.

 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789–1851) Cooper began his writing career at the age of 30. He wrote his first book, Precaution (1820), primarily to demonstrate to his wife that he could write a better novel than the one he was reading to her at the time. Precaution was a conventional novel of English manners and was not a success. Cooper chose for his second book a subject closer to home, and the result, The Spy (1821), a novel about the American Revolution (1775-1783) in New York State, was successful both in the United States and abroad. In 1823 Cooper wrote The Pioneers, the first of the five novels that make up the Leather-Stocking Tales. The remaining four books—The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841)—continue the story of Natty Bumppo, one of the most famous characters in American fiction. The Leather-Stocking Tales are noted for their portrayal of American subject matter in American settings. The hero of the tales, Natty Bumppo, embodies the conflict between preserving nature unspoiled and developing the land in the name of progress. He is a white frontiersman with ties to the settlers who nevertheless spends much of his time in the wilderness with Native Americans. The positioning of Natty Bumppo between two modes of living appealed to readers and contributed to Cooper's broad appeal, both in the United States and overseas. Cooper's popularity was also established with the publication during the 1820s and 1830s of a number of sea tales, the first of which was The Pilot (1823). During his seven years abroad in Europe from 1826 to 1833, Cooper produced a variety of novels, including The Bravo (1831), The Heidenmauer (1832), and The Headsman (1833), which form a trilogy intended to portray realistically the feudalism of medieval Europe.

WASHINGTON IRVING (1789–1859) was born and educated in a well-to-do family and would likely have chosen some profession other than writing had it not been for friends who helped him to publish his Sketch Book in America and England simultaneously, obtaining copyright and payment in both countries, making his publishing venture more profitable than was common at the time. Irving is remembered for famous stories such as “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and for helping to instill a sense of history and wonder among Americans for their new home. Under the pen name of Geoffrey Crayon, Irving wrote the essays and short stories collected in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-1820). The Sketch Book, as it is also known, was his most popular work and was widely acclaimed in both England and the United States for its geniality, grace, and humor. From 1826 until 1829 Irving was a member of the staff of the United States legation in Madrid. During this period and after his return to England, he wrote several historical works, the most popular of which was the History of Christopher Columbus (1828). Another well-known work of this period was The Alhambra (1832), a series of sketches and stories based on Irving's residence in 1829 in an ancient Moorish palace at Granada, Spain. In 1832, after an absence that lasted 17 years, he returned to the United States, where he was welcomed as a figure of international importance. Over the next few years Irving traveled to the American West and wrote several books using the West as their setting. These works include A Tour on the Prairies (1835), Astoria (1836), and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A. (1837). Irving's other works include Bracebridge Hall (1822), Tales of a Traveller (1824), A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829), Oliver Goldsmith (1849), and Life of Washington (5 volumes, 1855-1859).

ROMANTIC PERIOD, 1820–1860

The Romantic Movement arrived in the United States around 1820, coinciding with the nation’s discovery of its distinctive artistic voice. The excitement of this discovery was fueled by the idealism

and passion of romanticism, resulting in the great works of the American renaissance by such writers as RALPH WALDO EMERSON, HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WALT WHITMAN, HERMAN MELVILLE, MARGARET

FULLER, and others. Romanticism was well suited to the fledgling American literature. It affirmed the democratic ideals of individualism, found value in the common person, and looked to the imagination for inspiration. Romanticism found a natural home in the transcendentalists of New England. The transcendentalist movement was based on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. Transcendentalists vowed that each soul was a microcosm of the world itself and thus the doctrine.

 American Writers of self-reliance and individualism, associated so strongly with this movement, were born and nurtured by the prevailing romantic spirit. Concord, Massachusetts, was the first rural artists’ colony in America and the home of transcendentalism. Here the core writers associated with this movement met for conversation, published their magazine, The Dial, wrote great books, planned reform movements, and gardened. Great emphasis was placed on individual expression and on discovering an authentic literary form and voice. The sheer number of literary masterpieces created between the 1830s and 1860s, when the Civil War captured everyone’s attention, attests to the richness of America’s literary culture during this period. The major texts of the transcendentalist movement included Emerson’s (1803–82) essay Nature, Thoreau’s (1817–62) masterpiece Walden, Or Life in the Woods, and Walt Whitman’s (1819–92) Leaves of Grass. Emerson is remembered for his insistence on the creation of an American individualism inspired by nature. The central figure in the transcendentalist movement, Emerson had a spiritual mission, with much of his insight inspired by his readings in Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Sufism. He was also a great prose poet, whose work had significant influence on Whitman, as well as on poets of subsequent generations, including HART CRANE, WALLACE STEVENS, and ROBERT FROST.

Thoreau’s experiments in living independently and in accordance with his principles became the subject of his writings. Walden, his book about the time he spent living in a cabin that he built at Walden Pond, is considered to be the first American work of literature about self-discovery. In the book, Thoreau admonishes the reader to live life authentically. Walden remains very popular with modern readers due to its ecological consciousness, its theories of civil disobedience, and its commitment to basic civil rights.

A carpenter by trade and free spirit by nature, Walt Whitman tapped into America’s democratic spirit with his book Leaves of Grass. The poems, including the famous “Song of Myself,” rose from the romantic and transcendentalist ideal of oneness with nature and celebrated the notion of creation itself. Both innovative and energetic, the poems spoke without inhibition, creating their own history and embodying the American epic that generations of literary critics had been searching for.

The Boston Brahmins exercised yet another influence in this period. Composed of scholar-poets such as HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807–82), this group sought to infuse American literature with a bit of refined European culture. Longfellow, for example, wrote three long narrative poems in European forms that popularized Native American legends. These included “Evangeline” and “The Song of Hiawatha.” He also wrote a travel narrative that retold European legends. Although the Brahmin poets meant to educate the American reader, their efforts served in part to retard the recognition of the immensely innovative and genuinely American talents of Walt Whitman, EDGAR ALLAN POE, HERMAN MELVILLE, and other writers of the Romantic period.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) wrote the classic novel of Puritan America, The Scarlet Letter, which was published in 1850 and treats issues that were usually suppressed at the time, such as the influence of democratic ideals on individual behavior, especially sexual and religious freedom. His work is notable for its portrayal of broken, dysfunctional families and its emphasis on the individual alone in tragic circumstances. Unable to earn a living by literary work, in 1839 Hawthorne took a job as weigher in the Boston, Massachusetts, customhouse. Two years later he returned to writing and produced a series of sketches of New England history for children, Grandfather's Chair: A History for Youth (1841). In 1842 he married Sophia Amelia Peabody of Salem and settled in Concord, Massachusetts, in a house called the Old Manse. During the four years he lived in Concord, Hawthorne wrote a number of tales that were later published as Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). They include “Roger Malvin's Burial,””Rappaccini's Daughter,” and “Young Goodman Brown,” tales in which Hawthorne's preoccupation with the effects of pride, guilt, sin, and secrecy are combined with a continued emphasis on symbolism and allegory. In 1850 Hawthorne moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, where he enjoyed the friendship of the novelist Herman Melville, an admirer of Hawthorne's work. At Lenox, Hawthorne wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which he traced the decadence of Puritanism in an old New England family, and A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (1852) and Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys (1853), which retold classical legends. During a short stay in West Newton, Massachusetts, he produced The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852), which show his continuing preoccupation with the themes of guilt and pride, and The Blithedale Romance (1852), a novel inspired by his life at Brook Farm.

A sailor who turned his interest and knowledge of the sea and exploration into classic novels, Herman Melville (1819–91) is best remembered as the author of the great novel Moby Dick. More realistic and philosophical than some of the other books of this period, the novel is still tragic, with its mighty protagonist, Ahab, doomed in the end to be consumed by the great white whale he intends to know and conquer. Moby Dick is also notable for its modern tendency to be reflexive. Melville is often compelled in the course of the novel to comment on the act of writing, reading, and understanding—explorations of the mind, another ultimately unknowable, unconquerable terrain. An epic of the natural world, like Thoreau’s Walden before it and Twain’s Huckleberry Finn after it, Moby Dick dramatizes the human spirit in its struggle with nature. It finds the greatest power of life in the hidden and wild depths of the human spirit, not in the organized and ranked urban world. Melville's first five novels all achieved quick popularity. Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846) and Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847) were romances of the South Sea islands. Mardi (1849) was a complex allegorical fantasy. Redburn, His First Voyage (1849), based on Melville's first trip to sea, and White-Jacket, or the World in a Man-of-War (1850), a fictionalization of his experiences in the navy, exposed the abuse of sailors that was prevalent in the U.S. Navy at that time. In 1850 Melville moved to a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he became an intimate friend of the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom Melville dedicated his masterpiece, Moby Dick; or The Whale (1851). The central theme of this novel is the conflict between Captain Ahab, master of the whaler Pequod, and Moby Dick, a great white whale that once tore off one of Ahab's legs at the knee. Ahab is dedicated to revenge; he drives himself and his crew, which includes Ishmael, the narrator of the story, over the seas in a desperate search for his enemy. The body of the book is written in a wholly original, powerful narrative style, which, in certain sections of the work, Melville varied with great success. The most impressive of these sections include the rhetorically magnificent sermon delivered before sailing and the soliloquies of the mates; lengthy “flats,” passages conveying nonnarrative material, usually of a technical nature, such as the chapter about whales; and the more purely ornamental passages, such as the tale of the Tally-Ho. These sections can stand by themselves as short stories of merit. The work is invested with Ishmael's sense of profound wonder at his story, but it nonetheless conveys full awareness that Ahab's quest can have but one end. And so it proves to be: Moby Dick destroys the Pequod and all its crew except Ishmael.

Moby Dick was not a financial success, and Melville's next novel, Pierre: or the Ambiguities (1852), a darkly allegorical exploration of the nature of evil, was a critical and financial failure. Today, however, it enjoys some acceptance by critics and the public. Israel Potter (1855), a historical romance, was equally unsuccessful. The Piazza Tales (1856) contains some of Melville's finest shorter works; particularly notable are the powerful short stories “Benito Cereno” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” and the ten descriptive sketches of the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, titled “The Encantadas.” The unfinished novel The Confidence-Man (1857), set on a steamboat on the Mississippi River, satirizes the selfishness and commercialism of Melville's time.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882), American poet, one of the most popular and celebrated poets of his time. Longfellow received wide public recognition with his initial volume of verse, Voices of the Night (1839), which contained the poem “A Psalm of Life.” His subsequent poetic works include Ballads (1841), in which he introduced some of his most famous poetry, such as “The Wreck of the Hesperus,””The Village Blacksmith,””The Skeleton in Armor,” and “Excelsior”; and three notable long narrative poems on American themes: Evangeline (1847), about lovers separated during the French and Indian War (1754-1763); The Song of Hiawatha (1855), addressing Native American themes; and The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), about a love triangle in colonial New England. Longfellow's other works include The Seaside and the Fireside (1849); Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), containing the well-known poem “Paul Revere's Ride”; and Ultima Thule (1880). Longfellow also made a verse translation of The Divine Comedy (3 volumes, 1865-1867) by Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) shared an interest in the metaphysical world with the other writers of this period, but his writing incorporated elements of the strange and exotic to produce tales unlike most other writers of the time. He exercised tremendous influence over future American writers of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Poe’s interest in themes of death-in-life, especially being buried alive or returning to life from the grave, appear in many of his stories and poems, including “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Although these themes carry great dramatic weight, they also reflect the disturbed unconscious of his characters. Like Hawthorne and Melville, Poe finds exploration of the human psyche to be the most compelling form of adventure. Ultimately, the writers of the romantic period exposed the dark underside of the American dream. Their stories, novels, and poems revealed the loneliness, alienation, and psychic distress that came with excessive competition and individualism. Reform movements gained momentum during the idealistic decades of romanticism. Many writers found their voice in the struggle to improve society.

The feminist MARGARET FULLER (1810–50), for example, was an exceptional essayist and the first professional woman journalist in America. Her popular book, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, explores woman’s role in society and uses transcendentalist principles to analyze the difficulties faced

by women. Other reformers included HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811–96), whose sentimental novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the most popular novel of the 19^th century. It appealed to the reader’s emotions and dramatized the contentious social issues surrounding slavery that led the country into civil war.

Abolitionism and other social reform issues were at the heart of the women’s literary movement.

SOJOURNER TRUTH (ca. 1797–1883) represented this movement as well, and though she was illiterate

her entire life, her Narrative of Sojourner Truth, transcribed by the editor Oliver Gilbert, tells the remarkable story of her work as a charismatic women’s rights advocate.

EMILY DICKINSON (1830–86) was ahead of her time in many ways. Writing at the end of the transcendentalist period in New England, Dickinson loved nature and studied the birds and plants in her

surroundings, which often found their way into her poems. She was also a loner and an extreme individualist, all of which made the principles of transcendentalism appealing to her. But unlike the writers of that period, Dickinson wrote poems that were extremely modern in their reliance on images

and their insistence on brevity. Hers was a chiseled and mystical style that captivates modern literary

critics. The novelists and fiction writers most associated with the Romantic period include NATHANIEL

HAWTHORNE, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville, writers who were more interested in the larger-than-life characteristics of their protagonists than they were in presenting realistic figures. Characters like Ahab in Moby Dick and Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter struggle with their own anguished souls in the mystery of life that rises from the dark and unknown unconscious. The drama is centered in the human interior. The loners of early American literature reflected the lack of tradition in early American culture. Communities were not as settled as in Europe, and society was relatively classless compared to that of England. The constantly changing American frontier was reflected in the literary landscape, where the novelist had both the freedom and burden of inventing and defining the democratic American society in which he or she lived.

THE RISE OF REALISM, 1860–1914

With the Civil War (1861–65) came significant change in America’s vision of itself. Where idealists had focused on the abolition of slavery and on promoting human rights prior to the war, they increasingly

looked toward economic progress and materialism afterward. Great industries were founded, and business boomed. Railroads crossed the country, and with them the telegraph, linking town to town and America to the world. The population of the country moved from the countryside to the city. Immigrants flooded harbors on both coasts, providing cheap labor, as well as a wealth of diversity. The Age of Realism (1860–1914) took hold as American writers began to grapple with the dehumanizing forces of the capitalist economy. As industry and cities grew larger, the individual seemed to matter less. Literature of this period illustrates the harm done to the weak and vulnerable in such a competitive and impersonal society. Triumph comes in realist fiction through hard work and kindness.

Mark Twain (1835–1910),a Mississippi River phrase meaning “two fathoms deep” was the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens American writer and humorist. In 1867 Twain lectured in New York City, and in the same year he visited Europe and Palestine. He wrote of these travels in The Innocents Abroad (1869), a book exaggerating those aspects of European culture that impress American tourists. In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon. After living briefly in Buffalo, New York, the couple moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Much of Twain's best work was written in the 1870s and 1880s in Hartford or during the summers at Quarry Farm, near Elmira, New York. Roughing It (1872) recounts his early adventures as a miner and journalist; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) celebrates boyhood in a town on the Mississippi River; A Tramp Abroad (1880) describes a walking trip through the Black Forest of Germany and the Swiss Alps; The Prince and the Pauper (1882), a children's book, focuses on switched identities in Tudor England; Life on the Mississippi (1883) combines an autobiographical account of his experiences as a river pilot with a visit to the Mississippi nearly two decades after he left it; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) satirizes oppression in feudal England.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the sequel to Tom Sawyer, is considered Twain's masterpiece. The book is the story of the title character, known as Huck, a boy who flees his father by rafting down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave, Jim. The pair's adventures show Huck (and the reader) the cruelty of which men and women are capable. Another theme of the novel is the conflict between Huck's feelings of friendship with Jim, who is one of the few people he can trust, and his knowledge that he is breaking the laws of the time by helping Jim escape. Huckleberry Finn, which is almost entirely narrated from Huck's point of view, is noted for its authentic language and for its deep commitment to freedom. Huck's adventures also provide the reader with a panorama of American life along the Mississippi before the Civil War. Twain's skill in capturing the rhythms of that life helps make the book one of the masterpieces of American literature.

Other offshoots of realism include the naturalist novels of THEODORE DREISER (1871–1945) and JACK LONDON; the investigative journalism of UPTON SINCLAIR; Western writers like BRET HARTE and WILLA CATHER; (1873–1947) cosmopolitan realists EDITH WHARTON (1862–1937) and HENRY JAMES (1843–1916); and Chicago poets EDGAR LEE MASTERS, (1868–1950) VACHEL LINDSAY (1879–1931), and CARL SANDBURG (1878–1967).

Mark Twain’s realism was unconventional, arriving as it did at the tail end of romanticism. It was a fresh way to speak the truth and get society’s attention. Huckleberry Finn dramatizes Twain’s vision of a harmonious community and restores the open road and the American wilderness as the ultimate destination, in opposition to the already established American myth of success in the material world. Twain’s frontier humor and regional sketches represented literary currents that became prevalent in the late 19th century. Although numerous writers prior to this time were interested in specific regions, the regionalists, or local colorists as they have sometimes been called, were interested exclusively in portraying a particular place as realistically as possible. Bret Harte was an extremely popular author of western tales, portraying the mining frontier. MARY WILKINS FREEMAN (1852–1930), Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96), and SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849–1909) all depicted New England with intimate detail. Later in this period, the novelists ELLEN GLASGOW (1873–1945) and Willa Cather explored women’s lives and their own regions— Richmond, Virginia, for Glasgow and the Nebraska prairie for Cather—in novels that resist categorization due to their exceptional ability to speak universally. Henry James and Edith Wharton were both brought up in wealthy, educated New York families who spent much of their time in Europe. Consequently, the novelists often contrasted Europeans and Americans. Their novels frequently focused on the gulf between the inner reality of individuals and the social conventions surrounding them. Naturalist writers like Theodore Dreiser insistently probed the increasingly industrial age. Naturalism developed as an extension of realism and was concerned primarily with depicting life as

accurately as possible, without artificial distortions brought about by literary conventions or philosophical ideals. The characters in naturalist novels were helpless victims of environmental and biological forces beyond their control. An American Tragedy, Dreiser’s best-known novel, is a scathing

portrait of the American success myth gone awry. It reflects the dissatisfaction and despair of the poor and dispossessed at the bottom of America’s social structure. The investigative journalism of the muckrakers came about in response to these social ills and gave rise to writers like Upton Sinclair, whose literary work played a significant role in instigating social change. The Jungle, Sinclair’s famous portrayal

of the Chicago meat-packing industry, caught the attention of the American public as well as the political elite, creating a hotbed of discourse that ultimately led to new laws and more protection for the general population.

James, Henry (1843-1916), American expatriate writer, whose masterly fiction juxtaposed American innocence and European experience in a series of intense, psychologically complex works. James's work is characterized by leisurely pacing and subtle delineation of character rather than by dramatic incidents or complicated plots. His major writings, highly sensitive examples of the objective psychological novel, deal with the world of leisure and sophistication he had grown to know intimately in Europe. In his early novels and tales, James's theme was the impact of European culture on Americans traveling or living abroad. Examples from this phase are Roderick Hudson (1876), The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1879), and The Portrait of a Lady (1881). In time James began to explore the types and manners of the English scene, as in The Tragic Muse (1890), The Spoils of Poynton (1897), and The Awkward Age (1899). His last three great novels, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904), again take up the theme of contrast between American and European societies. several of his works have been successfully dramatized and adapted for films, including two of his many tales, “The Aspern Papers” (1888) and “The Turn of the Screw” (1898), and two of his most famous novels, The Europeans (1878) and Washington Square (1881).

Jewett, Sarah Orne (1849-1909), American writer, born in South Berwick, Maine, and educated at Berwick Academy. Her stories of New England life depict the fading charms of the provincial New England countryside. Her works won her a place as one of the most important writers of the local-color literary genre in American literature. Among Jewett's works are Deephaven (1877); A Country Doctor (1884); The Life of Nancy (1895); The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), her most outstanding work; and The Tory Lover (1901).

Dreiser, Theodore Herman Albert (1871-1945), American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. Although some critics regarded his style as clumsy and plodding, Dreiser was generally recognized as an American literary pioneer. His career as a novelist began in 1900 with Sister Carrie, which he wrote in the intervals between work for various magazines. The novel tells the story of a small-town girl who moves to Chicago and eventually becomes a Broadway star in New York City. It also traces the decline and eventual suicide of her lover. As a result of public outcry against the novel for its depiction of unrepentant and unpunished characters and for its frank treatment of sexual issues, the publisher withdrew the book from public sale. The American writer Sinclair Lewis hailed Sister Carrie as “the first book free of English literary influence.” In The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914), he drew harsh portraits of a type of ruthless businessman. In The “Genius” (1915), he presented a study of the artistic temperament in a mercenary society. This novel increased his influence among young American writers, who acclaimed him leader of a new school of social realism. Real fame, however, did not come to Dreiser until 1925, when his An American Tragedy had great popular success.

Cather, Willa Sibert (1873-1947), American writer, one of the country's foremost novelists, whose carefully crafted prose conveys vivid pictures of the American landscape and the people it molded. Influenced by the prose of the American regional writer Sarah Orne Jewett, Cather set many of her works in Nebraska and the American Southwest, areas with which she was familiar from her childhood.

From her college years on, Cather wrote short stories and poetry; her first published book was a collection of verse, April Twilights (1903); her first published prose was a group of stories, The Troll Garden (1905). Not until 1913, however, after having written her first novel, Alexander's Bridge (1912), and having resigned from McClure's, did Cather devote herself solely to writing. Her subsequent novels, O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918), depict the resolute, dignified life of immigrant farm families on the Great Plains, in contrast to that of the native-born town dwellers. In these works Cather is noted for her skills in evoking the pioneer spirit. Cather also used the prairie setting in her novels One of Ours (1922; Pulitzer Prize, 1923) and A Lost Lady (1923). In these books her theme is the contrast between encroaching urbanization and the achievements of the pioneers. In Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), considered by some critics to be Cather's greatest novel, she deals with the missionary experiences of a Roman Catholic bishop among the Native Americans of New Mexico. Cather's last novel, Sapphira and the Slave Girl, was published in 1940.  

Frost, Robert (1874-1963), American poet, who drew his images from the New England countryside and his language from New England speech. Although Frost’s images and voice often seem familiar and old, his observations have an edge of skepticism and irony that make his work, upon rereading, never as old-fashioned, easy, or carefree as it first appears. In being both traditional and skeptical, Frost’s poetry helped provide a link between the American poetry of the 19th century and that of the 20th century.

In England, Frost achieved his first literary success. His book of poems A Boy's Will (1913) was printed by the first English publisher that Frost approached. The work established Frost as an author and was representative of his lifelong poetic style: sparse and technically precise, yet evocative in the use of simple and earthy imagery. His second collection, North of Boston, was published in 1914 and also won praise. In 1961, at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, Frost became the first poet to read a poem—"The Gift Outright”—at a presidential inauguration.

Frost disliked free verse, which was popular with many writers of his time, and instead used traditional metrical and rhythmical schemes. He often wrote in the standard meter of blank verse (lines with five stresses) but ran sentences over several lines so that the poetic meter plays subtly under the rhythms of natural speech. The first lines of "Birches" (1916) illustrate this distinctive approach to rhythm: "When I see birches bend to left and right/ Across the lines of straighter darker trees,/ I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.”

Frost listened to the speech in his country world north of Boston, and he recorded it. He had what he called "The ruling passion in man ... a gregarious instinct to keep together by minding each other's business." Frost continued to mind his neighbors’ speech and business in his volume Mountain Interval (1916), which included the poems "The Road Not Taken," "An Old Man's Winter Night," "Birches," "Putting in the Seed," "Snow," and "A Time to Talk."

Frost’s 1923 volume New Hampshire earned him the first of four Pulitzer Prizes that he would win over the next 20 years. The volume included longer poems that told stories, such as "Paul's Wife" and "The Witch of Coös," as well as short meditations on various subjects. These meditations include "Fragmentary Blue," "Fire and Ice," "Nothing Gold Can Stay," and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," which is perhaps Frost’s best-known poem. The poem’s ending, in which the line “And miles to go before I sleep” is repeated, indicates Frost’s philosophy of continual and productive work—whether it be work on his New England farm, or the written work required to create his poetry.

In the title poem of New Hampshire, Frost makes an explicit statement about his beliefs. He declares how much he would "hate to be a runaway from nature," and asserts that people must make the best of life. He accepts pain or pleasure with indifference but expects more of the former than of the latter, saying that he makes “a virtue of my suffering” and that he will “not lack for pain to keep me awake.”

Frost's Collected Poems (1930) won him his second Pulitzer Prize. And his next two collections—A Further Range (1936) and A Witness Tree (1942)—also won Pulitzers. He then wrote two plays in blank verse. The first, A Masque of Reason (1945), received lukewarm praise from critics. The second, A Masque of Mercy (1947), which is a modern treatment of Christian biblical figures, was more successful.

Frost's final volumes of poetry were Steeple Bush (1947) and In the Clearing (1962). The masterpiece of the first collection is "Directive." In this complex poem, rich words and images direct a reader to escape the present that is “now too much for us” by remembering a past time and place, which memory has “...made simple by the loss/ of detail...” The poem concludes with symbolic lines about the value of returning to one’s roots: "Here are your waters and your watering place./ Drink and be whole again beyond confusion."

Sinclair, Upton Beall (1878-1968), The author of 90 books, Sinclair became well known after the publication of his novel The Jungle (1906), which exposed the unsanitary and miserable working conditions in the stockyards of Chicago, Illinois, and led to an investigation by the federal government and the subsequent passage of pure food laws. Sinclair wrote other social and political novels and studies advocating prohibition and criticizing the newspaper industry. His well-known series of 11 novels concerned with Lanny Budd, a wealthy American secret agent who participates in important international events, includes World's End (1940) and Dragon's Teeth (1942), which dealt with Germany under the Nazis and won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. He also wrote The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair (1962).

The Chicago Renaissance, led by Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg, concerned itself with portraying the common people, using colloquial language, and openly dealing with taboo subjects such as sex. It was the voice of the Midwest, rising up to meet the East Coast literary establishment on its own terms. Sandburg, often thought of as a latter day Walt Whitman, sang the song of the Midwest in everyday, ebullient language that captured the heart of Americans across the land. Lindsay foreshadowed the Beats with his love of public readings and his populist spirit. Edgar Lee Masters is remembered for his daring and original Spoon River Anthology, which presented Master’s collection of epitaphs on the 250 people buried in a fictitious small country village cemetery.

MODERNISM, 1920–1945

The modernist movement began to take hold in the period between the two world wars. Although spirits soared, the economy boomed, and modern conveniences eased the drudgery of daily tasks for the growing middle class, a general disillusionment settled over the country. GERTRUDE STEIN (1874–1946) aptly named young Americans of the 1920s “the lost generation.” For despite the growth and success of this period, the loss of traditional values and social structures resulted in a personal identity crisis for many. Numerous works of literature evoke the excesses and ennui of this period, especially ERNEST HEMINGWAY’s (1899–1961) The Sun Also Rises and F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’s (1896–1940) This Side of Paradise. T. S. ELIOT (1888–1965) captured the spiritual emptiness felt by this generation in his famous long poem The Waste Land. Innovative writers such as Gertrude Stein, EZRA POUND (1885–1972), and WALLACE STEVENS (1879–1955) mirrored the breakdown of traditional society in writing that played fast and loose with conventional notions of time, space, and consciousness. Modern life was faster and more technological, and modernist literature addressed these changes by choosing the fragmented over the unified and the abstract over the concrete. Traditional devices of narrative and plot were discarded. Point of view in the novel became as important as the story itself. While writers such as Henry James, WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897–1962), and others experimented with fictional points of view, no longer satisfied with the simple first-person or third-person narrative, they also wrote in a more realistic style, carrying the tradition of American realism into the 20th century. Socially conscious writers of this period who carried on in the tradition of the naturalists and muckrakers included JOHN DOS PASSOS  (1896–1970), JOHN STEINBECK (1930– ), and CLIFFORD ODETS (1906–1963).

Several literary currents developed during the years between the two wars that would have a major impact on the development of American literature in the 20th century. The first was the creation of the New Criticism, which was a new theoretical approach to literature. The name was taken from the title of a book published by JOHN CROWE RANSOM (1888–1974) in 1941. Ransom, a leading writer of the Southern Renaissance, was associated with the Fugitives, a literary group centered at Vanderbilt University. His book laid out a critical approach to literature that was based not on the history and biography of the writer but on elements of the text itself. The New Criticism became the dominant American critical approach in the mid-20th century. The Fugitives, of which Ransom was the leader, included the poets ALLEN TATE (1899–1979) and ROBERT PENN WARREN (1905–89), among others. This southern literary school called for a return to traditional values that its proponents thought could still be found in the South and a rejection of the urban, commercial values that dominated the North.

The modernist period was really the beginning of a truly American theater. Prior to the 1920s, American dramatists routinely looked to Europe for inspiration. But with modernism, playwrights such as EUGENE O’NEILL (1888–1953), THORNTON WILDER (1897–1975), and Clifford Odets began to play with tradition and locate a uniquely American dramatic voice.

Lewis, (Harry) Sinclair (1885-1951), American novelist, whose naturalistic style and choice of subject matter was much imitated by later writers. He replaced the traditionally romantic and complacent conception of American life with one that was realistic and even bitter. In Main Street (1920) Lewis first developed the theme that was to run through his most important work: the monotony, emotional frustration, and lack of spiritual and intellectual values in American middle-class life. His novel Babbitt (1922) mercilessly characterizes the small-town American businessman who conforms blindly to the materialistic social and ethical standards of his environment; the word “Babbitt,” designating a man of this type, has become part of the language. In Arrowsmith (1925) Lewis exposed the lack of scientific idealism sometimes found in the medical profession; Elmer Gantry (1927) portrays a type of hypocritical and mercenary religious leader. In another of these crusading novels, Dodsworth (1929), Lewis depicts the egotistic, pretentious married woman sometimes found in American upper-middle-class circles.

Among his later works are It Can't Happen Here (1935), the chilling story of a future revolution leading to Fascist control of the U.S., and Kingsblood Royal (1947), a novel on racial intolerance. Lewis was fascinated by the theater. He collaborated on a dramatization of Dodsworth (1934) with the American playwright Sidney Howard and did his own dramatization of It Can't Happen Here (1936). His reputation was international. Although he generally scoffed at prizes and refused the Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for Arrowsmith, Lewis accepted the 1930 Nobel Prize in literature. He was the first American ever to receive this award.

O’Neill, Eugene Gladstone (1888-1953), American playwright, whose work dramatizes the plight of people driven by elemental passions, by memory and dream, and by an awareness of the forces that threaten to overwhelm them. His early plays, appearing between 1916 and 1920, helped initiate American theater’s shift away from elegant parlor dramas and toward gritty naturalistic plays. O’Neill’s later plays covered varied ground, leaping from expressionism—an attempt to depict subjective feelings or emotions rather than objective reality—to comedy, and finally to modern reworkings of classical myth. In 1936 he became the first American dramatist to win the Nobel Prize in literature.

Longer, more deeply felt plays appeared in the 1920s. Many of these dramas were strongly influenced by the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and they stripped away people’s civilized veneers and probed their inner psyches. Beyond the Horizon focuses on the fruitless dreams of a farm family. The Emperor Jones (1920), which was one of the first American plays with a lead role for black actors, concerns the leader of a West Indies island whose subjects rebel, drive him into the jungle, and finally kill him. It uses expressionistic techniques such as distorting time and action to expose characters’ emotional states. Anna Christie features a noble prostitute, slang-filled dialogue, and the use of the fog and the sea to symbolize different states of mind.

In The Hairy Ape (1922) a ship’s stoker, the person who feeds coal into the ship’s furnace, is transformed into an animalistic rough. All God’s Chillun’s Got Wings (1924) dramatizes problems associated with a racially mixed marriage. Desire Under the Elms (1925) alludes to themes of Greek mythology and uses New England farm life as the setting for a tragic tale involving adultery, incest, and infanticide. The Great God Brown (1926) probes the psychology of a businessman, and the hugely popular nine-act Strange Interlude follows the life of a woman from daughter to wife to mother, using interior monologue to trace her quest for happiness.O’Neill continued exploring the interior self in Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), in which the tragic Greek story of Electra provides mythic resonance to the story of a New England family confronted by death during the Civil War (1861-1865). O’Neill produced his only comedy, Ah, Wilderness!, in 1933. A story of small-town life set at O’Neill’s childhood summer home in Connecticut, Ah, Wilderness! became one of his most popular plays.  In 1934 O’Neill entered a highly creative but withdrawn period. No new play appeared on Broadway for several years, but O’Neill continued writing while he lived contentedly with his third wife. In the mid-1940s his plays again began to be produced. The most important were The Iceman Cometh (1946), A Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1957). Of these, only Iceman appeared during O’Neill’s lifetime. Set in 1912, Iceman depicts a group of New York City saloon lodgers, feeding their dreams with booze and chatter, disrupted by an intrusive salesman. In A Moon for the Misbegotten, O’Neill fictionalized the close relationship between his alcoholic brother, Jamie, and their mother, represented as a strong Irish matron. A Long Day’s Journey into Night is even more autobiographical. It portrays a day in the life of a failed actor, his drug-addicted wife, and their two sons, one of whom is a drunk and the other an ex-sailor with wistful memories of sea life. Haunted by failed ambitions and unachievable dreams, each member of the Tyrone family represents the average person drifting toward the “night” of death. Poet T. S. Eliot said it was “one of the most moving plays I have ever seen,” and critic Brendan Gill described it as “the finest play written in English in my lifetime.”

Buck, Pearl (1892-1973), American novelist, born in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Born Pearl Sydenstricker, she was the daughter of American missionaries and lived in China until 1933. She wrote more than 65 books, many of which sympathetically portray China and its people. Her simple, direct style and concern for the fundamental values of human life were derived from her study of the Chinese novel. With her work she strove to create a better understanding of China, and she was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1938. Among her works are The Good Earth (1931), a dramatic tale of China in the 1920s that received a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1932 and has remained popular, and Dragon Seed (1942). She wrote several novels under the pseudonym John Sedges, and she published two volumes of autobiography, My Several Worlds (1954) and A Bridge for Passing (1964). Her last works include The Kennedy Women (1970) and China As I See It (1970).

Fitzgerald, F(rancis) Scott (Key) (1896-1940), American writer, whose novels and short stories chronicled changing social attitudes during the 1920s, a period dubbed The Jazz Age by the author. He is best known for his novels The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934), both of which depict disillusion with the American dream of self-betterment, wealth, and success through hard work and perseverance. Financial success as well as celebrity enabled the Fitzgeralds to become integral figures in the Jazz Age culture that he portrayed in his writing. Fitzgerald’s partly autobiographical second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned (1922), is the story of a wealthy young couple whose lives are destroyed by their extravagant lifestyle. In 1925 Fitzgerald reached the peak of his powers with what many critics think is his finest work, The Great Gatsby. Written in crisp, concise prose and told by Nick Carraway, a satiric yet sympathetic narrator, it is the story of Jay Gatsby, a young American ne’er-do-well from the Midwest. Gatsby becomes a bootlegger (seller of illegal liquor) in order to attain the wealth and lavish way of life he feels are necessary to win the love of Daisy Buchanan, a married, upper-class woman who had once rejected him. The story ends tragically with Gatsby’s destruction. Although the narrator ultimately denounces Daisy and others who confuse the American dream with the pursuit of wealth and power, he sympathizes with those like Gatsby who pursue the dream for a redeeming end such as love.

Tender Is the Night is generally regarded as Fitzgerald’s dramatization of his wife Zelda’s slide into insanity. It tells of a young doctor who marries one of his psychiatric patients. The novel met with a cool reception. Poor reviews of Tender Is the Night alienated Fitzgerald from the literary scene and Zelda’s disintegration left him personally distraught. In 1937 he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he worked as a scriptwriter. While there, he began The Last Tycoon, a novel set amid corruption and vulgarity in the Hollywood motion-picture industry. At the age of 44 Fitzgerald died of a heart attack.

An edited version of his unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon, was published in 1941. In 1945 Edmund Wilson edited The Crack-Up, a collection of Fitzgerald’s essays and letters from the 1930s. Other collections of Fitzgerald’s writings include All The Sad Young Men (1926), Afternoon of an Author (1958), The Pat Hobby Stories (1962), and Letters (1963).

Faulkner, William (1897-1962), American novelist, known for his epic portrayal, in some 20 novels, of the tragic conflict between the old and the new South. Faulkner's complex plots and narrative style alienated many readers of his early works, but he was recognized later as one of the greatest American writers. Faulkner's first book, The Marble Faun, a collection of pastoral poems, was privately printed in 1924. The following year he moved to New Orleans, worked as a journalist, and met the American short-story writer Sherwood Anderson, who helped him find a publisher for his first novel, Soldier's Pay (1926), and also convinced him to write about the people and places he knew best. After a brief tour of Europe, Faulkner returned home and began his series of baroque, brooding novels set in the mythical Yoknapatawpha County (based on Lafayette County, Mississippi), peopling it with his own ancestors, Native Americans, blacks, shadowy backwoods hermits, and loutish poor whites. In the first of these novels, Sartoris (1929), he patterned the character Colonel Sartoris after his own great-grandfather, William Cuthbert Falkner, a soldier, politician, railroad builder, and author. (Faulkner restored the “u” that had been removed from the family name.)

The year 1929 was crucial to Faulkner. That year Sartoris was followed by The Sound and the Fury, an account of the tragic downfall of the Compson family. The novel uses four different narrative voices to piece together the story and thus challenges the reader by presenting a fragmented plot told from multiple points of view. The structure of The Sound and the Fury presaged the narrative innovations Faulkner would explore throughout his career. Most of the books he wrote over the rest of his life received favorable reviews, but only one, Sanctuary (1931), sold well. Despite its sensationalism and brutality, its underlying concerns were with corruption and disillusionment. The book's success led to lucrative work as a scriptwriter for Hollywood, which, for a short time, freed Faulkner to write his novels as his imagination dictated. Faulkner's two most successful screenplays were written for movies that were directed by Howard Hawks: To Have and Have Not (1945, adapted from the novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway) and The Big Sleep (1946, adapted from the novel by the American writer Raymond Chandler). Faulkner's works demanded much of his readers. To create a mood, he might let one of his complex, convoluted sentences run on for more than a page. He juggled time, spliced narratives, experimented with multiple narrators, and interrupted simple stories with rambling, stream-of-consciousness soliloquies. Consequently, his readership dwindled. In 1946 the critic Malcolm Cowley, concerned that Faulkner was insufficiently known and appreciated, put together The Portable Faulkner, arranging extracts from Faulkner's novels into a chronological sequence that gave the entire Yoknapatawpha saga a new clarity, thus making Faulkner's genius accessible to a new generation of readers.

His accomplishment was internationally recognized in 1949, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. His major works include As I Lay Dying (1930), the story of a family's journey to bury a mother; Light in August (1932); Absalom, Absalom! (1936), about Thomas Sutpen's attempt to found a Southern dynasty; The Unvanquished (1938); The Hamlet (1940), the first novel in a trilogy about the rise of the Snopes family; Go Down Moses (1942), a collection of Yoknapatawpha County stories of which the novella The Bear is the best known; Intruder in the Dust (1948); A Fable (1954); The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1959), which completed the Snopes trilogy; and The Reivers (1962). Faulkner especially was interested in multigenerational family chronicles, and many characters appear in more than one book; this gives the Yoknapatawpha County saga a sense of continuity that makes the area and its inhabitants seem real. Faulkner continued to write—both novels and short stories—until his death.

Wilder, Thornton Niven (1897-1975), American author, whose plays and novels, usually based on allegories and myths, have reached a worldwide audience through various versions. In his compelling novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927; Pulitzer Prize, 1928), Wilder united the lives of a disparate group of travelers in colonial Peru through a single event, the disaster in which they die. His other novels include The Ides of March (1948), an epistolary work about the Roman statesman Julius Caesar, and The Eighth Day (1967), about the events surrounding a murder. For the latter work Wilder was awarded the 1968National Book Award. Theophilus North (1973) is a group of short stories. Wilder's direct, accessible style also works well in drama. His first full-length play, the allegorical The Trumpet Shall Sound (1926), preceded a long list of popular one-act plays and translations. An enduring work of American drama is Our Town (1938), a touching look at small-town American life that brought Wilder the 1938 Pulitzer Prize in drama. It was theatrically experimental for its time, performed on a stage without scenery or props, using stepladders to represent the upstairs of a house and folding chairs to indicate a graveyard. The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), a comic view of human life through the ages, won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize in drama. One of Wilder's most successful works, The Matchmaker (1954), derived ultimately from a 19th-century Austrian comedy, was made into a motion picture in 1958 and adapted in 1964 as the musical comedy Hello, Dolly!, which was filmed in turn in 1969.

Hemingway, Ernest Miller (1899-1961), American novelist and short-story writer, whose style is characterized by crispness, laconic dialogue, and emotional understatement. Hemingway's writings and his personal life exerted a profound influence on American writers of his time. Many of his works are regarded as classics of American literature, and some have been made into motion pictures. One of the foremost authors of the era between the two world wars, Hemingway in his early works depicted the lives of two types of people. One type consisted of men and women deprived, by World War I, of faith in the moral values in which they had believed, and who lived with cynical disregard for anything but their own emotional needs. The other type were men of simple character and primitive emotions, such as prizefighters and bullfighters. Hemingway wrote of their courageous and usually futile battles against circumstances. His earliest works include the collections of short stories Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923), his first work; In Our Time (1924), tales reflecting his experiences as a youth in the northern Michigan woods; Men Without Women (1927), a volume that included “The Killers,” remarkable for its description of impending doom; and Winner Take Nothing (1933), stories characterizing people in unfortunate circumstances in Europe. The novel that established Hemingway's reputation, The Sun Also Rises (1926), is the story of a group of morally irresponsible Americans and Britons living in France and Spain, members of the so-called lost generation of the post-World War I period. Hemingway's second important novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), is the story of a deeply moving love affair in wartime Italy between an American officer in the Italian ambulance service and a British nurse. The novel was followed by two nonfiction works, Death in the Afternoon (1932), prose pieces mainly about bullfighting; and Green Hills of Africa (1935), accounts of big-game hunting.

In his original work, Hemingway used themes of helplessness and defeat, but in the late 1930s he began to express concern about social problems. His novel To Have and Have Not (1937) and his play The Fifth Column, published in The Fifth Column and the First Forty-nine Stories (1938), strongly condemned economic and political injustices. Two of his best short stories, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” were part of the latter work. In the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), which deals with the Spanish Civil War, he showed that the loss of liberty anywhere in the world is a warning that liberty is endangered everywhere. During the next decade Hemingway's only literary efforts were Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time (1942), which he edited, and the novel Across the River and into the Trees (1950). In 1952 Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea, a powerful novelette about an aged Cuban fisherman, for which he won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. In 1954 Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. The last work published in his lifetime was Collected Poems (1960). He committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1961. Hemingway's posthumously published books include A Moveable Feast (1964), an account of his early years in Paris; Byline: Ernest Hemingway (1967), selected newspaper articles and dispatches; Ernest Hemingway, Cub Reporter: Kansas City Star Stories (1970); Islands in the Stream (1970), a sea novel; the unfinished The Garden of Eden (1986); and True at First Light (1999), edited by Hemingway's son Patrick from a draft manuscript.

Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977), Russian American novelist, poet, and critic, whose highly inventive writings earned him critical acclaim as a major 20th-century literary figure. Nabokov's novels demonstrate great stylistic and compositional virtuosity, and his astonishing imagination often took a morbid or grotesque turn. He is best known for his novel Lolita (1955). Most of Nabokov's early works in Russian show a strong inclination toward parody, punning, and hoax. These qualities later carried over to his writing in English.  His revised and translated his Russian work Camera obscura (1933) as Laughter in the Dark in English.  Nabokov's first full-length English work was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), about a young Russian man’s relationship to his half-brother, a British writer. Lolita, a brilliantly detailed, unconventional story, recounts the intense and obsessive involvement of a middle-aged European man with a sexually precocious young American girl, whom Nabokov termed a nymphet. The controversial book caused a sensation in Europe, and when it was published in the United States in 1958, it received a similar reception.

Nabokov wrote several other novels in English. Pnin (1957) focuses on a Russian professor living in the United States. Pale Fire (1962) is a satire on academic pretentiousness consisting of a 999-line poem and commentary by a demented New England scholar who is the exiled king of a mythical country. Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969) is a complicated work that is, in part, an inquiry into the nature of time. Transparent Things (1972) is another meditation on time, and Look at the Harlequins! (1974) is the autobiography of a fictional Russian émigré writer whose life parallels Nabokov’s. Nabokov’s short-story collections include Nabokov's Dozen (1958), Tyrants Destroyed (1975), and The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (1995), which was published after his death and contained 13 previously unpublished stories. His poetry includes two collections in Russian and an English collection, Poems (1959).

Nabokov’s nonfiction works include Nikolai Gogol (1944), a critical study of the 19th-century Russian writer, and Strong Opinions (1973), a collection of essays. Nabokov’s four-volume translation, with commentaries, of the novel Eugene Onegin (1823-1831) by Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin appeared in 1964. Speak, Memory (1966) is a highly evocative account of Nabokov’s childhood in imperial Russia and his later life up to 1940, and was originally published in 1951 in a shorter form as Conclusive Evidence. Lectures on Literature (1980) and Lectures on Russian Literature (1981) deal with European and Russian literary masters and are based on lectures Nabokov gave at Cornell in the 1950s.

Steinbeck, John Ernst (1902-1968), American writer and Nobel laureate, who described in his work the unremitting struggle of people who depend on the soil for their livelihood. As a youth, he worked as a ranch hand and fruit picker. His first novel, Cup of Gold (1929), romanticizes the life and exploits of the famous 17th-century Welsh pirate Sir Henry Morgan. In The Pastures of Heaven (1932), a group of short stories depicting a community of California farmers, Steinbeck first dealt with the hardworking people and social themes associated with most of his works. His other early books include To a God Unknown (1933), the story of a farmer whose belief in a pagan fertility cult impels him, during a severe drought, to sacrifice his own life; Tortilla Flat (1935), a sympathetic portrayal of Americans of Mexican descent dwelling near Monterey, California; In Dubious Battle (1936), a novel concerned with a strike of migratory fruit pickers; and Of Mice and Men (1937), a tragic story of two itinerant farm laborers yearning for a small farm of their own. Steinbeck's most widely known work is The Grapes of Wrath (1939; Pulitzer Prize, 1940), the stark account of the Joad family from the impoverished Oklahoma Dust Bowl and their migration to California during the economic depression of the 1930s. The controversial novel, received not only as realistic fiction but as a moving document of social protest, is an American classic. Steinbeck's other works include The Moon Is Down (1942), Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1947), East of Eden (1952), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), and America and Americans (1966). In 1962 he wrote the popular Travels with Charley, an autobiographical account of a trip across the United States accompanied by a pet poodle. Steinbeck was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in literature. His modernization of the Arthurian legends, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, was published posthumously in 1976.

Williams, Tennessee (1911-1983), American playwright and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, whose works are set largely in the American South. He worked at a variety of odd jobs until 1945, when he first appeared on the Broadway scene as the author of The Glass Menagerie. This evocative “memory play” won the New York Drama Critics' Circle award as the best play of the season. It was filmed in 1950 and has been performed on the stage throughout the world. The emotion-charged A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) has been called the best play ever written by an American. It was successfully filmed (1952), and it won Williams his first Pulitzer Prize in drama. He was awarded another Pulitzer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (stage, 1954; film, 1958). All three of these plays contain the poetic dialogue, the symbolism, and the highly original characters for which Williams is noted and are set in the American South, a regional background which the author used to create a remarkable blend of decadence, nostalgia, and sensuality. Other successful plays by Williams are Summer and Smoke (1948), rewritten as Eccentricities of a Nightingale (produced 1964); The Rose Tattoo (1950); the long one-act Suddenly Last Summer (1958); Sweet Bird of Youth (1959); and Night of the Iguana (1961). Although Williams continued to write for the theater, he was unable to repeat the success of most of his early works. One of his last plays was Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), based on the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. Williams died in New York City, February 25, 1983.

Two collections of Williams's many one-act plays were published: 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946) and American Blues (1948). Williams's fiction includes two novels, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950) and Moïse and the World of Reason (1975) and four volumes of short stories—One Arm and Other Stories (1948), Hard Candy (1954), The Knightly Quest (1969), and Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed (1974). Nine of his plays were made into films, and he wrote one original screenplay, Baby Doll (1956). In his provocative Memoirs (1975), Williams described his own dramatic problems with drugs and alcohol and his latterly avowed homosexuality.

Miller, Arthur (1915- ), American dramatist, whose works are concerned with the responsibility of each individual to other members of society. Simply and colloquially written, Miller's plays spring from his social conscience and from his compassion for those who are vulnerable to the false values imposed on them by society. Miller won awards for his comedy The Grass Still Grows. Later, his 1944 play The Man Who Had All the Luck, although not a commercial success, won him the Theater Guild Award that same year. Miller's novel Focus (1945), an attack on anti-Semitism, was well received, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle chose his play All My Sons as the best play of 1947. This study of the effect of opportunism on family relationships foreshadowed most of Miller's later work.

Miller's major achievement was Death of a Salesman (1949). It won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for drama and the 1949 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play of the year and is often cited as one of the finest plays by a contemporary dramatist. It tells, in almost poetic terms, the tragic story of Willy Loman, an average man much like Miller's father. Although Miller generally wrote in a realistic style (see Realism), much of this play is conveyed expressionistically through Willy's mind and memory. Miller's play The Crucible (1953), although concerned with the Salem witchcraft trials, was actually aimed at the then widespread congressional investigation of subversive activities in the United States; the drama won the 1953 Tony Award. Miller's other dramas include A View from the Bridge (1955); After the Fall (1964); Incident at Vichy (1964); The Price (1968); The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977), on the Soviet treatment of dissident writers; Danger: Memory! (1986), two one-act plays presented together; The Ride Down Mount Morgan (1991); and The Ryan Interview (1995). Other works include the screenplay The Misfits (1961), written for his second wife, American actor Marilyn Monroe; The American Clock (1980), a series of dramatic vignettes about the Great Depression of the 1930s; a collection of short stories, I Don't Need You Any More (1967); and The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller (1978). Miller's autobiography, Timebends: A Life, was published in 1987.

Mailer, Norman (1923- ), American writer, whose books frequently explore the unconscious impulses that drive human behavior. Sex and violence often play major roles, and his works frequently express bitterness toward society and a strong liberal philosophy. His service in the United States Army during World War II (1939-1945) provided background material for his naturalistic novel The Naked and the Dead (1948), which was a critical and financial success. Mailer’s next novels, Barbary Shore (1951) and The Deer Park (1955), were considered by many to be disappointments. He revived his reputation with “The White Negro” (1957), a sociological essay, and Advertisements for Myself (1959), a collection of essays, reviews, notebook entries, and unfinished stories that was an artistic search for alternative modes of expression. Mailer’s next novels, An American Dream (1965) and Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967), explored the place of violence in modern American life.

During the 1960s Mailer developed a vivid journalistic style with the intention of presenting actual events with all the drama and complexity found in fiction. His 1968 book Armies of the Night was the culmination of these efforts. The work, which in 1969 won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, was an account of Mailer’s experiences at the Washington peace rallies of 1968, where he was jailed and fined. Mailer’s other works of this era include Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968), about the Republican and Democratic national conventions of 1968, and Of a Fire on the Moon (1971), which recounts the first piloted moon landing. Mailer further explored the theme of violence in The Executioner’s Song (1979), a novel about convicted murderer Gary Gilmore. The book was awarded the 1980 Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

Mailer’s other books include Ancient Evenings (1983), the first novel of a projected trilogy on Egypt; Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1984), a detective story that was made into a motion picture in 1987; Harlot’s Ghost (1991), a lengthy novel about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Oswald’s Tale (1995), about Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of United States president John F. Kennedy; and Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: an Interpretative Biography (1995). Mailer’s fictional novel The Gospel According to the Son (1997) sets out to retell the life of Jesus Christ from the first person perspective of Jesus himself. Mailer has also written, directed, and appeared in a number of motion pictures.

Capote, Truman (1924-1984), American writer, whose work was praised for its technical virtuosity and keen observation. His first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, about a Southern boy's recognition of his homosexuality, was published in 1948, when Capote was 23 years old. Capote often drew on his Southern background for his work. His other books include A Tree of Night and Other Stories (1949), The Grass Harp (1951), The Muses Are Heard (1956), and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958). His widely acclaimed In Cold Blood (1966), which Capote called a “nonfiction novel,” mixes fact and fiction in its account of the murder of four family members in Garden City, Kansas; it was made into a film of the same title in 1967. Music for Chameleons (1980) is a collection of essays. Capote wrote the script for the musical stage play House of Flowers (1954) and collaborated on the scenario of the motion picture Beat the Devil (1954).

Updike, John (1932- ), American author, known for his writings about the American suburban scene. Updike is noted for well-crafted prose that explores the hidden tensions of middle-class American life. His characters frequently experience personal turmoil and must respond to crises relating to religion, family obligations, and marital infidelity. Updike's first book, The Carpentered Hen (1958), was a collection of verse. His first novel, The Poorhouse Fair (1959), is about the inhabitants of a home for the aged, and it received a great deal of critical praise. One of Updike’s best-known works, Rabbit, Run (1960), tells the story of the character Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a young man reluctant to confront the responsibilities of life. The sequels Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981; Pulitzer Prize, 1982), and Rabbit at Rest (1990; Pulitzer Prize, 1991) follow Rabbit as he navigates through middle-class life in the changing America of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

In The Centaur, which won the 1963 National Book Award for fiction, Updike adapted characters from Greek legend as a Pennsylvania schoolteacher and his adolescent son. Of the Farm (1965) is a short, intense look at a man torn between past and present, as represented by his mother and his wife. Couples (1968) probes the world of suburban married couples in the mid-1960s. Bech: A Book (1970) is a collection of seven interrelated stories about a writer. Updike followed it with Bech Is Back (1982) and Bech at Bay (1998). Updike's other works include The Coup (1979), a novel set in an imaginary African country; The Witches of Eastwick (1984; motion picture, 1987), which drew sharp criticism for what was considered an antifeminist stance; Brazil (1994); the short-story collection The Afterlife (1994); In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996); and Gertrude and Claudis (2000). Updike displayed his perceptive literary criticism in the essay collection Hugging the Shore (1983).

RISE OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE

The literary achievements of African Americans in post–Civil War America were astounding. Beginning

with autobiography, protest literature, sermons, and poetry, the roots of black writing established themselves with writers such as BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1856–1915), JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1871–1938), and W. E. B. DU BOIS, who became the central figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, Up from Slavery, tells the story of his struggle to better

himself. Eventually one of the most powerful black men in the nation, Washington worked relentlessly

to improve the lives of African Americans and is remembered for his controversial accommodationist policy toward whites. The poet James Weldon Johnson was of mixed white and black ancestry and explored issues of identity in his fictional book Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. His poems showed the influence of African-American spirituals.

The Harlem Renaissance in New York City in the 1920s had an intensity that sent shock waves throughout the nation. Black artists, musicians, dancers, and writers found new appreciation for their work. A wide range of styles and visions existed within Harlem’s literary community, but the common thread for all black writers of this period was the advent of a cultural identity that included both the sufferings and injustices of the African-American experience as well as the creative triumphs and rich communal history. Many African-American writers, such as ZORA NEALE HURSTON (1903–60) and LANGSTON HUGHES (1902–67) broke with tradition in favor of writing in the style and idiom of their own communities. Others continued to incorporate traditional forms and themes into their writing, believing that art should not be defined by race. Among these writers were COUNTEE CULLEN (1903–46), who was briefly married to W. E. B. Du Bois’s daughter. An accomplished writer of formal verse, Cullen believed that race should not dictate the subject or style of a poem. JEAN TOOMER (1894–1967) also believed in a vision of America in which race did not define people and chose to employ traditional poetic forms in his writing. Characteristic works by writers who embraced the creation of a new black aesthetic include Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, RICHARD WRIGHT’s (1908–60) Native Son, and Langston Hughes’s jazz-inspired poetry.

 

LITERATURE SINCE 1945

The sense of dislocation that pervaded modernist literature carried over into the postwar period, encouraged by the Holocaust of World War II, an increase in materialism, the protest movements of the 1960s, the cold war, and the Vietnam War, among other events. Perhaps greatest of all the influences, however, was the development of a pervasive mass media culture. In poetry, the shift away from traditional forms and ideas produced a myriad of styles that are quite varied and numerous. Poets who carried on or revitalized traditions include the Fugitive poets JOHN CROWE RANSOM, ALLEN TATE, and ROBERT PENN WARREN, LOUISE BOGAN (1897–1970), ROBERT LOWELL (1917–77), JAMES MERRILL (1926–95), and WENDELL BERRY (1934– ), among others. These poets were not shy about using poetic diction, meter, and rhyme, though they often reinterpreted a traditional form by applying a modern twist. Other poets shaped their own unique styles. Although they may have drawn on tradition, they ultimately differentiated themselves as wholly contemporary. The poets of the confessional school fell

into this category. JOHN BERRYMAN (1914–72), SYLVIA PLATH (1932–63), and ANNE SEXTON (1928–74) expressed a direct relationship to poetic traditions in many of their earlier poems but went on to write in their own unique, idiosyncratic styles. Other poets whose relationship to tradition was similar include THEODORE ROETHKE (1908–63), ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911–79), ADRIENNE RICH (1929– ), PHILIP LEVINE (1928– ), and JAMES DICKEY (1923–97).

A number of experimental schools of poetry emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. These included the Black Mountain School, the New York school, the Beats, and the surrealist and existentialist poets. The poets associated with these schools tended to be outspoken and independent of mainstream intellectual communities at universities. Their poetry was daring, sometimes shocking, and generally committed to the spontaneous and organic. Some of the notable writers of these movements include the Black Mountain poets ROBERT CREELEY (1926– ) and DENISE LEVERTOV (1923– ), whose minimalist styles reflect the philosophy of projective verse that was the theoretical focus of their movement. Apolitical and disinterested in moral questions, poets of the New York school, including KENNETH KOCH (1925–2002) and JOHN ASHBERY, (1927– ), became known for their reliance on hallucinatory images and mysterious prose written in experimental forms. Their verbal puzzles often seemed to hold little meaning, existing only for themselves. Absurdity and abstraction, with a self-mocking tone, defined the poets of the New York school, who became known by this name because of their location and their many references to the city.

San Francisco poets, such as GARY SNYDER (1930– ) and LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (1919– ) merged with the Beat poets of the 1950s since they were all centered in San Francisco. Snyder’s poems exhibit traits characteristic of the San Francisco school, including indebtedness to Eastern philosophy and religion, as well as a reliance on the natural world for poetic inspiration. The Beat poets were distinguished by their interest in oral poetry and their audacity in the face of convention. It was the most anti-establishment literary movement in America, but the focus of Beat poets such as ALLEN GINSBERG (1926–97) and ANNE WALDMAN (1945– ) was not on negation and protest so much as it was on affirmation and celebration. Although the modernist poets introduced symbolist techniques into American poetry in the 1920s, surrealism did not take root in the United States until the 1960s, when poets such as ROBERT BLY (1926– ), CHARLES SIMIC (1938– ), CHARLES WRIGHT (1935– ), MARK STRAND (1934– ), and others began to incorporate archetypal images and existentialist themes. Another trend in poetry since 1945 has been the increase in poetry by women and ethnic minorities. Distinguished women poets of the past half century included RITA DOVE (1952– ), LOUISE GLÜCK (1943– ), AUDRE LORDE (1934–92), and MARY OLIVER (1935– ), among many others. Writers brought into the spotlight by the renaissance in multiethnic literature included Hispanic Americans such as DENISE CHAVEZ (1948– ), Asian Americans such as MARILYN CHIN (1955– ), Native Americans such as LESLIE MARMON SILKO (1948– ) and SIMON ORTIZ (1941– ) and African Americans such as AMIRI BARAKA (1934– ).

Fiction since 1945 has been as various and difficult to categorize as poetry during the same period. Stimulated by international literary influences such as magic realism from Latin America and European existentialism, American fiction has also been profoundly affected by the computer age. Popular symbols and subjects handed down through the mass media pop up regularly in the literature of serious writers. It is not at all unusual to find THOMAS PYNCHON (1937– ), JOYCE CAROL OATES (1938– ) or ALICE WALKER (1932– ), for example, commenting on Hollywood films, popular music, or even the fashion industry. In addition, the experimentation with point of view that characterized realist fiction between the world wars has been taken one step further. The postmodern novel is highly reflexive, always keeping one eye on itself and commenting on what it sees there. Post–World War II novelists of note are linked by the subject matter handed down to them. NORMAN MAILER (1923– ), THOMAS PYNCHON (1937– ), HERMAN WOUK (1915– ), and KURT VONNEGUT (1922– ), among others, wrote masterful novels set during World War II.

The Southern Renaissance continued to produce new talent among fiction writers in the 1940s with EUDORA WELTY (1909–2001), TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (1914–83), and KATHERINE ANNE PORTER (1890–1980) among them. Fiction of the 1950s was characterized by a sense of alienation and stress amidst abundance. JOHN CHEEVER (1912–82), JOHN UPDIKE (1932– ), ARTHUR MILLER (1915– ), and PHILIP ROTH (1933– ) were some of the writers whose work explored the dark side of material abundance and corporate success. SAUL BELLOW (1915– ), BERNARD MALAMUD (1914–86), and ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER (1904–91) led the way for Jewish American writers, whose significant contributions helped shape American literature to include Jewish experience both in America and in the Old World. A blurring of lines between fiction and nonfiction has characterized many works of literature since the 1960s. This trend began with TRUMAN CAPOTE’s (1924–84) In Cold Blood, which appeared in 1966. A highly suspenseful analysis of a brutal mass murder, the book read like a detective novel. Other books that pushed the boundaries between the two genres included Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song which

was published in 1979. Realism began to make a return in the 1970s with novels by John Gardner (1933–1982), TONI MORRISON (1931– ) and ALICE WALKER (1944– ), among others. At the same time, literature by ethnic minorities became a significant component of the literary scene. Dramatists AUGUST WILSON (1945– ) and DAVID HENRY HWANG (1957– ) and novelists MAXINE HONG KINGSTON (1940– ),

AMY TAN (1952– ), OSCAR HIJUELOS (1951– ), and SANDRA CISNEROS (1954– ) have captured the interest of American readers and critics within their own ethnic communities and beyond. Although an interest in portraying a sense of place in literature has always been part of the American tradition, regionalism experienced a decline during the early and mid-20th century. The turn of the 21st century, however, witnessed a return to regionalism as one of the defining traits of American fiction. From STEPHEN KING’s (1947– ) thrillers set in Maine to ANNE TYLER’s (1941– ) domestic novels set in Baltimore, Maryland, writers have delved into the places they know best to offer readers all across the country an insider’s view. Other writers whose works portray a strong sense of place include KAYE GIBBONS (1960– ) and REYNOLDS PRICE (1933– ), both of whom set most of their fiction in North Carolina; WENDELL BERRY (1934– ) whose agrarian fiction is set in rural Kentucky; JANE SMILEY (1949– ) whose novels unfold in the vast American heartland; BARBARA KINGSOLVER (1955– ), CORMAC MCCARTHY (1933– ), and LESLIE MARMON SILKO (1948– ), all of whom chronicle the American Southwest; WALLACE STEGNER (1909–93) whose region was California and the West Coast; and RAYMOND CARVER (1939–88), whose stories brought to life the small towns of the Pacific Northwest. Dramatists like Chicago’s DAVID MAMET (1947– ) have also contributed to this literary trend.

From colonial times to the present, writers have followed a circuitous path in helping to map America’s identity, for a country’s literature is no less than its own vast autobiography, its story of itself. Shaped by history, by ancestors, by the tremendous technological and scientific advances of the last 400 years, and by the varied influences brought to bear in the global age, the American story is rich with both tradition and possibility.

Malamud, Bernard (1914-1986), American novelist and short-story writer, most of whose books focus on the Jewish experience in America. Malamud's first novel, The Natural (1952), reworks the legend of the Holy Grail as an allegorical fantasy about a star baseball player. His second novel, The Assistant (1957), is concerned with Jewish themes and reflects the sad, impoverished Brooklyn scenes of his childhood. The Fixer (1966), for which Malamud received the 1967 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is a poignant novel (based on a true story) of the suffering of a Russian Jewish workman sentenced unjustly to prison; it demonstrates how human beings can come through suffering to an affirmative view of life. The Tenants (1971), about the relationship between a Jewish man and a black man, deals with inner-city tensions. Malamud's later novels include Dubin's Lives (1979), about a writer of biographies, and God's Grace (1982). Malamud's short stories mix an abiding compassion for Jewish life with subtle touches of wry humor. They have been collected in The Magic Barrel (1958), Idiots First (1963), Pictures of Fidelman (1969), and Rembrandt's Hat (1973); a complete collection, The Stories of Bernard Malamud, was published in 1983.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1904-1991), Polish-born American writer in the Yiddish language, whose work features passion for life and despair at the passing of tradition. He drew heavily on his Polish background and on the stories of Jewish and medieval European folklore. Singer translated many of his works into English himself. In 1978 he won the Nobel Prize in literature for an “impassioned narrative art” that is rooted in Polish-Jewish culture. Singer’s first published novel, Der Sotn in Gorey (1935; Satan in Goray, 1955), deals with religious hysteria and the 17th-century pogroms, raids in which Jews in Poland were brutally massacred by Cossacks, a people of southern Russia. His other well-known novels include The Family Moskat (1950; translated 1965), the only one of his fictional works with no element of fantasy; The Manor (1967); and The Estate (1969). Singer also wrote many imaginative short stories, including those published in Gimpl tam un andere dertseylungen (Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories, 1957). He won National Book Awards for the children’s book A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw (1969) and for A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (1973).

In 1983 Singer’s short story Yentl the Yeshiva Boy (1962) was made into a popular motion picture produced by and starring Barbara Streisand. His Collected Stories was published in 1982, and Stories for Children was published in 1984. Meshuge (Meshugah, 1994) and Shotns baym Hodson (Shadows on the Hudson, 1998), which was originally serialized in the Jewish Daily Forward in 1957, deal with Jewish Holocaust survivors living in New York City. Both were published posthumously. Singer’s autobiographical works include In My Father's Court (1966), A Little Boy in Search of God (1976), A Young Man in Search of Love (1978), Lost in America (1981), and Love and Exile: A Memoir (1984).

 Bellow, Saul (1915- ), American novelist, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976. Bellow’s novels depict the struggle of individuals to preserve their personal identities in an indifferent society. His Nobel Prize citation read, “For the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.” During the war he also published his first novel, Dangling Man (1944), which deals with the anxiety and discomfort of a young man waiting to be drafted in wartime. Bellow’s next book was The Victim (1947). After winning a Guggenheim fellowship, Bellow lived for a time in Europe, where he wrote most of his novel The Adventures of Augie March (1953; National Book Award, 1954). A long, loosely structured narrative with a picaresque hero, the novel gives a vivid, often humorous picture of Jewish life in Chicago and of a young man’s search for identity.

Modern humanity, threatened with loss of identity but not destroyed in spirit, is the theme of Seize the Day (1956), about a man whose life is falling apart around him, and Henderson the Rain King (1959), an account of an American millionaire’s search for peace and self-knowledge. Herzog (1964; National Book Award, 1965) is the story of a university professor who writes letters to the world at large in an attempt to correct personal and universal injustices. The hero of Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970; National Book Award, 1971) is an aged Jewish intellectual, a refugee from Nazi Germany living in New York City. As the embodiment of old European values, Sammler is dismayed by contemporary American life, but he manages to maintain perspective.

Bellow received the 1976 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his novel Humboldt’s Gift (1975), which concerns the relationship between an author and a poet. Three months later he won the 1976 Nobel Prize for literature. Bellow’s subsequent works include The Dean’s December (1982), in which he continued his analysis of contemporary culture; To Jerusalem and Back (1976), a reflective study of a visit Bellow made to Israel; More Die of Heartbreak (1987), a novel in which Bellow returned to a Midwestern setting; and the essay collection It All Adds Up (1994). The Actual (1997) is a novella about a high school relationship taken up again after many years. Ravelstein (2000), about a university professor and his friendship with his own biographer, is based on the life of Bellow’s friend Allan Bloom, a prominent American intellectual.

Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr.. (1922- ), American novelist, whose breezy style and innovative subject matter gained him a wide following. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and educated at Cornell University, Vonnegut served in the United States Air Force during World War II (1939-1945). His experience as a prisoner of war, when he witnessed the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, is vividly recounted in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Vonnegut's other major novels include Player Piano (1952), a satire on modern automation; Cat's Cradle (1963), a fantasy about the end of the world; God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), a satire about an idealistic philanthropic foundation and its encounter with greed; and Slapstick (1976), a farce about a future American president. Many of Vonnegut's books employ science-fiction and fantasy techniques to communicate his concerns about the destructive capabilities of technology. He suggests that to maintain human compassion and kindness in modern society, there is no choice but to view 20th-century civilization with a mixture of sadness and humor. Vonnegut's other works include the novels The Sirens of Titan (1959), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Jailbird (1979), Galapagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), and Hocus Pocus (1990); the collection of short stories Welcome to the Monkey House (1968); the play Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970); and Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage (1981).

Heller, Joseph (1923-1999), American novelist, whose comic absurdist novel Catch-22 (1961) is a leading example of the black-humor movement in American fiction. The book served as an antiwar rallying point during the 1960s. Heller is known for showing language to be a frustrating and undependable method of communication in public discourse—military, diplomatic, philosophical, religious, and political—and for creating characters who try to escape the traps and inconsistencies of language.

Heller used his combat experiences as background material for Catch-22, which features the airman Yossarian as the hero and moral center of a satirical depiction of life in the army. Yossarian is portrayed as one of the last rational people in an insane war. In the novel, the absurdities of military life are represented by the regulation “Catch-22” (a phrase Heller introduced). The regulation, which prevents airmen from escaping service in bombing missions by pleading insanity, states that any airman rational enough to want to be grounded cannot possibly be insane and therefore is fit to fly. Catch-22 was dramatized as a motion picture in 1970. The themes and style of Heller's writing have been compared to those of Jewish American writers such as Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth, as well as to those of American satirist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Heller's grotesque renderings of moral crises are also reminiscent of the works of American author Nathanael West and European writer Franz Kafka, and of such European antiwar novels as All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by Erich Maria Remarque and The Good Soldier Schweik (1920-1923) by Jaroslav Hasek.

Heller's other novels include Something Happened (1974), a study of the fearfulness and anxiety of an American businessman; Good as Gold (1979); God Knows (1984); Picture This (1988); and Closing Time (1994), a sequel to Catch-22 that depicts a robust but aging Yossarian in a collapsing New York City during the early 1990s. Heller also wrote the plays We Bombed in New Haven (1967) and Catch-22: A Dramatization (1971), as well as the autobiographical works No Laughing Matter (1986) and Now and Then (1998).

Roth, Philip (1933- ), American writer, whose works often concern American Jewish life. For his first published work, Goodbye, Columbus (1959), a collection of stories, Roth won the 1960 National Book Award in fiction. The title story of the collection was made into a motion picture in 1969.

Roth’s first novel, Letting Go (1962), explores the agony of a young Jewish professor torn between emotion and reason. It was followed by When She Was Good (1967), a novel set in a Midwestern town. Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), a controversial and popular book, is devoted primarily to Alexander Portnoy’s sexual activities and is delivered as a monologue by Portnoy from his psychiatrist’s couch. Roth’s other books during this period include The Breast (1972), The Great American Novel (1973), and My Life as a Man (1974). In The Professor of Desire (1977) a young Jewish intellectual seeks personal satisfaction. The novels The Ghost Writer (1979), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), and The Counterlife (1986) focus on the writer Nathan Zuckerman and his problems.

Roth began a torrid writing pace in the 1990s. Patrimony (1991) describes Roth’s father’s struggle against a fatal illness. Roth also wrote the novels Deception (1990), Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993), and Sabbath’s Theater (1995), which won the 1995 National Book Award in fiction. His American Pastoral (1997), a story about a family's deterioration, won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I Married a Communist (1998) explores the lives of three men who were friends in the 1950s and lived through the anti-Communist movement in the United States. Nathan Zuckerman returns as the narrator in Roth's The Human Stain (2000), while The Dying Animal (2001) revives the main character from The Breast and The Professor of Desire.

Burroughs, William S(eward) (author) (1914-1997), American writer, painter, and experimental artist. In 1944 he met American writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, with whom he helped found the Beat Generation literary movement. Burroughs's literary experimentation is apparent in his novels, which combine visionary intensity, strong social satire, and the use of montage, collage, and improvisation. He was the inventor of the routine (a satirical fantasy the author composes through improvisation), the cutup (a collage technique applied to prose writing in which the writer literally cuts up and recombines text), and pop mythologies (mythologies the writer creates using material from popular culture). His novels include Junky (1953), Naked Lunch (1959), The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962), Nova Express (1964), The Wild Boys (1971), Exterminator! (1973), Port of Saints (1975), Cities of the Red Night (1981), Place of Dead Roads (1984), Queer (1985), and The Western Lands (1987). My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995), although a fictional work, mentions numerous events and people from Burrough's life. Ghost of Chance, also published in 1995, deals with drugs and paranoia.

Naked Lunch, based on Burroughs's experience as a drug addict, is acknowledged to be a seminal work. The novel's sexually explicit language and evocation of grotesque images resulted in the book being banned in Boston, Massachusetts. The ban was lifted after a trial in 1965 and 1966 that effectively ended censorship of literature in the United States. Naked Lunch was made into a motion picture in 1991. Burroughs also wrote a number of short experimental prose pieces, short stories, short novels, and essays. He collaborated with other writers and artists on literary, film, musical, and multimedia works. In the 1980s he also became a painter, and he exhibited widely.

Salinger, J. D. (1919- ), American novelist and short story writer, known for his stories dealing with the intellectual and emotional struggles of adolescents who are alienated from the empty, materialistic world of their parents. Salinger's work is marked by a profound sense of craftsmanship, a keen ear for dialogue, and a deep awareness of the frustrations of life in America after World War II (1939-1945).

At the age of 31, Salinger gained a major place in American fiction with the publication of his only novel, The Catcher in the Rye. The book quickly earned a reputation as a quintessential American coming-of-age tale. Nine Stories, a 1953 anthology of Salinger stories, won great critical acclaim. Reviewing it for the New York Times, novelist Eudora Welty praised Salinger's writing as “original, first-rate, serious and beautiful.” In one of the stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," the author introduces the fictional Glass family, an Irish-Jewish New York family with seven children. The family's saga, colored by the suicide of the precocious oldest son, Seymour, and informed by Salinger's growing interest in Zen Buddhism, would become the center of Salinger's work during the next decade.

The title characters of the twin novellas Franny and Zooey (1961) are Glass children. Franny is a high-strung college student who feels alienated from the academic world in her desperate search for spiritual meaning in life. Her brother Zooey, by contrast, is a charming and warm easygoing television actor who has made his peace with the corruption he finds in the world.

Albee, Edward Franklin (dramatist) (1928- ), American playwright, whose most successful plays focus on familial relationships. He was born in Washington, D.C., and adopted as an infant by the American theater executive Reed A. Albee of the Keith-Albee chain of vaudeville and motion picture theaters. Albee attended a number of preparatory schools and, for a short time, Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He wrote his first one-act play, The Zoo Story (1959), in three weeks. Among his other plays are the one-act The American Dream (1961); Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962); The Ballad of the Sad Café (1963), adapted from a novel by the American author Carson McCullers; Tiny Alice (1964); and A Delicate Balance (1966), for which he won the 1967 Pulitzer Prize in drama. For Seascape (1975), which had only a brief Broadway run, Albee won his second Pulitzer Prize. His later works include The Lady from Dubuque (1977), an adaptation (1979) of Lolita by the Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, and the Man With Three Arms (1983). In 1994 he received a third Pulitzer Prize for Three Tall Women (1991). Albee's early plays are marked by themes typical of the theater of the absurd, in which characters suffer from an inability or unwillingness to communicate meaningfully or to sympathize or empathize with one another.